March 24, 2015

Stij enrolled
me in DGNTFS, a Cooking Support Group. DGNTFS
stands for “Don’t Go Near That Fucking Stove!”

As you may
well imagine, I didn’t hold out a whole lot of hope for this little piece of
magic.

I arrived on
the appointed day and time, and discovered that it was quite a large
group. I expected one or two other
people, but there were fifteen! I found
an empty chair and sat next to a rather large woman whose hair was singed off.

“Interesting
look,” I commented.

“Happened
when I opened the oven to take out a turkey.
Didn’t know you couldn’t cook it at 700 degrees without this happening.”

“Really? I didn’t realize that ovens could reach that
temperature,” I said.

“Oh, they don’t. I put it in my kiln I use for firing pottery.”

“How did the
turkey come out?” Only I would ask this question.

“Charred
black with a nice glaze. I’m making a
lamp out of it.”

“Well, at
least it didn’t go to waste.”

“My husband
would beg to differ,” she said. “So what are you in for?”

“Possibly
because I accidentally burned my cooking school to the ground. But I think the
real reason is either my bread that ate the sofa or my exploding lasagna.”

“Wow, you’re
hard core,” the fellow on my left said. “There
are only a couple of other people here who can do that!”

“Well, I don’t
mean to.”

“As a matter
of fact, one of them just got offered a great job in munitions.”

“I wonder if
she’d like my lasagna recipe,” I said. “And
why are you here, if I may ask?”

“I sealed my
driveway.”

“What does
that have to do with cooking?”

“I sealed it
with my beef gravy.”

“Ah.”

At that
moment, the moderator walked in. He was
wearing a flak jacket, asbestos pants, an army issue helmet, bullet proof
safety glasses and steel-toed boots. Strapped
to his belt was a stomach pump and a taser.

“Good
morning, group. Before we get started,
might I inquire as to who made the refreshments for today?”

A little old
lady with massive burn scars timidly raised her hand.

“And might I
inquire, Maude, as to exactly what they are supposed to be?”

She placed a
device against her scarred throat. “They’re
cupcakes,” she replied in a robotic voice.

“I see,” he
said. “Now, class, what does Maude need
to know about cupcakes?”

“They shouldn’t
move on their own?” a young woman in a “Screw Gordon Ramsay” tee-shirt
ventured.

“That’s
correct. Are you paying attention,
Maude?”

She nodded,
withdrawing a pad and pencil from her pocketbook, and jotting down notes.

“Okay, what
else?

“They should
be made from flour?”

“Very good,
Steven. Unlike these.” He struggled to lift one, and it slipped out
of his hands and went right through the floor…and the basement.

“They should
have sugar in them?” a middle-aged woman with three fingers missing asked. She must be the other one with the exploding
food.

“Well,
Gloria, I think that’s probably a moot point where these cupcakes are
concerned.

Apparently,
each session was to be a dissection of the cooking of whoever drew the short
straw for refreshments.

They call
this ‘tough love.’

More like ‘tough
cupcakes,’ in my opinion.

After a few
more rounds of criticism, poor Maude got so angry that she threw her buzzer out
the window to inform us that she wasn’t speaking to any of us anymore.

“Our time is
up for today. I think I’ll ask our new member to bring next week’s
refreshments. Is that all right with
you, Carson?”

“It’s fine
with me. But my husband may be another
story.”

“Oh, you’ll
have to get a permission slip from him, and an affidavit stating that your fire
insurance is paid up.”

“What?”

“Just drop them
by during the week. My office is…was…in the basement. Ask at the front desk. They’ll let you know where I am.”

March 18, 2015

I’ve always
wondered something, and have never been able to come up with a reasonable explanation.

Why can’t men
just get out of cars?

Whenever we
arrive somewhere, I open up the door, and hop out.

Then, the
waiting begins.

First, Stij
adjusts the mirror. Why he does this is
a mystery to me. He has to use the side
mirrors to drive, because our truck has a cap on it and the bed is packed to
the gunwales with things like saws, tool boxes, spackle, paint, and the decomposing
body of his ex-wife. Therefore, the rear
view mirror is out of the question.

Next, he
takes off his seat belt, gazing down at it as if he’s never seen it before and
is unsure of how to work it or even what its purpose is. Finally, he takes it
off.

Next, he
checks the glove box. There is nothing
in the glove box, there never has been anything in the glove box, but he checks
it anyhow. Perhaps in the vain hope that
something he has lost will suddenly turn up there. But no, not today. He closes it.

Then he
adjusts the radio. We haven’t been
listening to the radio, but he adjusts it anyway.

Then he
checks his phone. It hasn’t rung during
the trip, but he figures he might have
hit some sort of mute button by mistake and may have missed a call from his
brother inviting him to a camping trip which he will never, until Satan skates
to work, ever agree to go on.

Finally, he
opens the door, but not all the way. It
kind of hangs there in partially open door limbo for five minutes or so, until
he closes it again, to reach around and fumble about in the back seat…presumably
for some Febreeze to take the edge off the ex-wife in the truck bed.

The door
opens all the way! At last, we’ll be
able to get inside to his sister’s dinner party before dessert.

But no, he
realizes he still has his sunglasses on, so the door closes while he takes them
off and stows them in the compartment between the seats.

Is it at this
point that I grow impatient.

I wrench open
the door and scream, “What are you doing in there? Forging a Van Gogh? Come on, already!”

And you know what
he says?

“Well, I was
just waiting for you.”

Funeral
services will be held at Elysian Memorial Gardens at two o’clock this Sunday.

March 10, 2015

I had this epiphany by way of a trip of
the Museum of Modern Art's annual show-and-sale in New York (MOMA [pronounced
"MOE-Ma"] to those "in the know"). I was
accompanied by an excruciatingly bohemian friend of mine, and was anticipating
my first foray into modern art with all the excitement of a five-year-old about
to meet Mickey Mouse.

Now, I have always favored Renaissance
and Flemish art, and I must say that, despite my eagerness for exposure to new
things, the trip was less an outing than a rude awakening.

The first room we ventured into contained
a huge pink faux marble Formica slab, just leaning against the wall.

"Come on," I said to my
companion. "We'd better go to another room. They're
renovating in here."

"Oh, just look at that!"

"At what?"

"That incredible statement about
isolation. Doesn't it just speak to you?"

"WHERE?"

She pointed at the pink
monolith. It was incredible all right. I sure didn't
believe it.

"That? The only thing
that says to me is that someone is getting ready to install a counter!"

My comment was met with an indignant huff.

After she had spent the requisite amount
of time drinking in the beauty and profundity of this "creation," we
proceeded to our left where, in a trail on the floor, were a dozen or so large,
pieces of slate. I, of course, walked on them.

"Please,
Madam!" a distressed museum guard shouted, running up and grabbing me by
the back of the coat. "Don't touch the exhibit!"

"The exhibit?"

"Yes! The
exhibit!" He pointed to the floor. "This piece
is worth $250,000!"

I gingerly stepped off the stones and
made a mental note to go home and cash in my sidewalk. My friend and
tour guide was nowhere to be seen, obviously fearing for her bohemian status in
SoHo, should she be caught undead, with a pleb like me.

Bemused, I wandered on
alone. The next exhibit was a glass ball on a pedestal in the center
of the room. That was it…for the whole room! It looked
like the scene of a séance suddenly abandoned. The descriptive card
read, "Universal Teardrop," an apt name considering that the price
tag on this baby would have brought not one, but many teardrops to the eyes of
any self-respecting universe. Shaking my head, I moved on.

The next exhibit was called, "Black
Lemons." Certain that I would find my former Camaro on display,
you can imagine my surprise upon discovering hundreds of lemons--the fruit,
that is--painted black and suspended from nylon filaments attached to the
ceiling. There were screens with black lemons painted on
them. There was a giant one in the shape of a
chair. There was even one that had a television set inside it.

It was beyond my comprehension that
people would pay good money to see something that I could easily duplicate in
my refrigerator after three or four weeks.

But the final exhibit…the piece de
resistance, if you will, was the creation called, simply,
"Cans." The room was so littered with empty soda pop cans
of every description that it reminded me of the trash compactor scene in
"Star Wars."

After I recovered from the assault on my
aesthetics, I noticed that this display was a favorite of the homeless people
in the area; most of whom were clustered around the barred windows, undoubtedly
toting up what they could get for it at their local redemption center.

According to the card, this pile of
litter was purported to be an artistic representation of the creation of the
world.

Ohhhhhkay.

The other people in the room--the
arty-fartsy Greenwich Village crowd, loved this stuff. Some of the
comments I overheard were:

"It was a good idea…a really good
idea…but it isn't conclusive, is it?"

"Not conclusive? How can
you say that? Look at it! Have you ever seen a more
succinct explanation of the origin of the species? It's all right
there in that arrogant arrangement of the Pepsi and Mountain Dew cans!"

"Oh, don't you just adore
Steinputz? I think this is the most meaningful thing he's ever done!"

God, I felt sorry for Steinputz.

While I was standing there, a MOMA
official whisked in and announced that this exhibit had just been sold for $45
million! There was respectful, subdued applause.

I wondered if they'd deliver it in a
garbage truck.

Fed up, I decided to try a little experiment. I
stood in front of a steel door with an EXIT sign above it, and just stared at
it. After a while, someone walked up to me, looked at the EXIT sign,
then at me, then at the EXIT sign again.

"What are you looking at?" he
asked.

"Only the clearest explanation of
death I've ever seen!" I replied, never taking my eyes off the sign.

He looked again. "Why,
yes, you're right! I can't understand how I could have missed
something this fabulous! Oh, Enid, come over here and look at
this. It's magnificent!"

In less time than it takes Andy Warhol to
sneer at Andrew Wyeth, I had been joined by an army of creative cognoscenti,
all babbling about this "masterpiece" before us.

I thought I had seen everything until
people started bidding on it.

I heard later that the door and the EXIT
sign sold for $1.5 million.

There is no doubt in my mind that
somewhere P.T. Barnum is rolling on the floor, laughing himself sick.

March 3, 2015

Long
before I met and married my husband, I’d heard many people say positive things
about being a step-parent, so I wasn’t terribly reluctant to accept a date with
a divorced man who clearly wanted to remarry.

He had
one child.

An only
child—probably because the kid had killed and eaten his siblings.

This
urchin was Beelzebub’s version of the Prince of Wales. Believe me, when this kid takes over,
the prior administration will look like the cast ofOklahoma!

I met
Damien when he was five going on 666. The
first thing he did was bite my leg . . . hard. As I writhed in pain, what did Daddy
say to Precious?

“Now,
Damien, that wasn’t very nice. I
think we might need a time-out, don’t you?”

The changeling
had bitten me and Pop was negotiating with him!

Yeah, give him a time out, I
thought. Because then he gets
back in the ring, he’s gonna get such a punch!

Damien
replies, “NO!”

“Now,
Damien . . .”

“Isaid,
‘NONONONONONONONONONONONONO! What
are you? Stupid?”

You know
what his father did then? No,
not give him a swat where he needed it most. Not hauling the little fiend off to
his room. Not revoking
television privileges for a week. No. He looked at this excrescence,
squatted down, and chucking,gave him a big hug!

So
father and son are having a Kodak moment, and I have been completely forgotten. Great. I limped to the phone to call my
doctor before sepsis set in, and I’d just reached his office, when Damien’s
father snatches the receiver out of my hand and hangs it up.

“What are
you doing?” he hissed, between clenched teeth. “Don’t you know how badly it will
affect his self-esteem if you go calling the doctor every time he plays with
you?”

“Playswith me! The little bas. . . boy. . .bitme!”

“He’s
only five! He’s just a
child! Don’t you think
you’re acting rather immaturely, blaming a child?”

I
couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Cawson?”
a meek little voice called.

“What is
it, Damien?” I asked.

“I
sowwy.” He had on an
ultra-innocent look that did not fool me for a second. But fooling Papa with it was a
no-brainer.

“Now,
see that? Don’t you feel
just terrible about what you were going to do? How do you think it would have made
him feel?”

Probably victorious, I
thought. Then I said, “All
I wanted was some advice on what I should do about this bite. Oddly enough, I felt that my doctor
would be able to give me that advice . . . and probably a stitch or two.” Blood was pouring from my leg like
white water down the Colorado River.

Damien
took one look at the blood and launched into hysterical crying. I got a black look from his father, as
if the entire mess were my fault. So
while he comforted the demon seed, I found my way to the bathroom, dumped some rubbing
alcohol on the tear that was spurting arterial blood, bit down on a towel to
keep from screaming, grabbed some dental floss, threaded a needle and stitchedmyselfup.

When I
returned to the scene of the crime, Damien’s father was conspicuously absent. “Where’s your father?” I asked.

“Oh, he
left. He had to go to the
store to buy me some candy. He
always does just what I want because he loves me,” the pestilence said.

“Really,”
was all I could muster.

“Hey,
you wanna play a game?”

“Does it
involve guns or knives?”

“Naw! Let’s play baseball!”

An hour
later, Damien’s father still hadn’t returned; I imagine because sulfur-flavored
bubble gum was hard to come by. Though
my leg had stopped bleeding, I was now the proud owner of two compound
fractures and a life-threatening concussion as a result of Damien’s facility
with a Louisville Slugger. When
he said, “Let’s play baseball,” I had no idea that I was meant to be the ball.

The
second or third time I drifted into consciousness, the father of this human
nightmare was standing over me, looking disgusted.

“Can’t
you be a little more careful? I
leave the house for ten minutes. . . “

“Two
hours, by my watch,” I said as clearly as I could with a mouthful of broken
teeth.

“Damien
said you fell down. Have
you been drinking?”

I found
some strength from somewhere. “Fell
down!? Fell down!? Your little delinquent smacked
me around with his baseball bat!”

“YOU’RE
NOT MY MOTHER!” Damien shouted.

“You bet
your butt I’m not, and I’m glad! I
feel sorry for your mother. Giving
birth to you must have been painful, what with the horns and the hooves. . .”

“I think
you’d better go. You are
obviously not suited to be a parent. You
don’t understand Damien’s sensitive nature.”

“Oh,
sure I do. I know he loves
music . . . he plays you like a violin.”

“That’s
enough.”

I
couldn’t resist. “You’re
not my father!”

Then I
crawled into the house and called for an ambulance. When I gave the operator the address,
she sighed.

“Jesus
Christ, hasn’t somebody killed that kid yet?”

“I don’t
think it’s possible without a vat of holy water and an exorcist.”

“I guess
I shouldn’t complain. He
practically keeps this ambulance service in business singlehandedly.”

“Really?”

“Oh,
yeah. Last month we had
fifteen calls to that address. The
month before, we. . .”

“You
know, as fascinating as this is, I really need to get to a hospital soon.”

“Right.
Ambulance on the way. Just
lock yourself in the bathroom and sit tight. If that guy would just stop dating, it
would save all of us a lot of grief. Well,
bye, hon. Good luck.”

After I
got out of the hospital I sent Damien and his father a couple of gifts.